Roger and Brian Eno invite fans to contribute to new Mixing Colours film project
Posted on April 28, 2020 by James
Following the recent release by Deutsche Grammophon of Mixing Colours, their first ever duo album, Roger and Brian Eno have invited fans to submit videos of their post-lockdown world to a new website
www.mixing-colours.com, from which they will select eleven as official accompaniment for music from the album. The idea was inspired by visuals for four tracks – ‘Celeste’, ‘Sand’, ‘Ultramarine’ and ‘Blonde’ – made by Brian Eno in collaboration with musician and software designer Peter Chilvers, then released in the run up to the album. Reflecting the collection’s overall peaceful nature, these married the pieces’ simplicity and contemplative qualities to suitably uncomplicated, mesmerising imagery of slowly changing, dreamlike panoramas.
With lockdowns continuing across the globe, the videos have taken on a greater sense of poignancy and timeliness, and the Eno brothers now encourage us to document and appreciate our own newly confined surroundings. “We want to ask people in the next few weeks to take a single shot of a quiet scene,” they explain, “at home, or out the window, or in their garden. Clouds passing, rustling tree leaves, a bird nesting, people conducting activities in the house: quiet moments that we are all enjoying, together, in isolation.”
Videos should be between 3-5 minutes long, shot in slow motion mode preferably, then uploaded to YouTube, Vimeo or Instagram. Anyone who wishes to participate can submit their entry at
www.mixing-colours.com, allowing the brothers to select those which will complete the project. Further collaborations between Brian Eno and Pete Chilvers are also due.
“Fifteen years in the on-off making,” The Observer’s Kitty Empire wrote in a four-star review upon Mixing Colours’s March 20th release, “its slowly unspooling, generative beauty feels like a balm for these anxious times.” This call to extend the visual element integral to the Mixing Colours album enables listeners to participate more deeply with the record’s ambient, palliative nature, pairing intimate surroundings with a similarly intimate soundtrack.
“The more you listen to this,” Roger Eno once said of Mixing Colours, “particularly with the fabulous worlds that Brian has created, you can really walk into this enormous landscape and stay.” Fans are now invited to find value in contemporary, more restricted landscapes, and to share these across the globe, reminding us that, despite current circumstances, we share more in common with one another than ever… not least music.
